Simon Pegg joins Spielberg’s READY PLAYER ONE

Simon Pegg is reportedly in talks to join the cast of Steven Spielberg’s upcoming Ready Player One. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Pegg will play OASIS creator Orgen Morrow in the big-screen adaptation of Ernest Cline’s best-seller. The Ready Player One cast includes Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke and Ben Mendelsohn.

Set in the near future, Ready Player One follows outcast teenager Wade Watts (Sheridan), who escapes from his bleak surroundings by logging in to the OASIS, a globally networked virtual utopia where users can lead idyllic alternate lives. When eccentric billionaire who created the OASIS dies, he offers up his vast fortune as the prize in an elaborate treasure hunt. Along with gamers from around the world, Wade joins the adventure, and quickly finds himself pitted against powerful corporate foes and other ruthless competitors who will do anything, in the oasis or the real world, to reach the treasure first.

A Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures production, the Ready Player One movie is being directed by Spielberg, who is also producing alongside Donald De Line, under his De Line Pictures banner, Dan Farah and Kristie Macosko Krieger. Bruce Berman will serve as executive producer.

This summer, Simon Pegg is set to reprise his role as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott in Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond. The film, which hits theaters July 22, is also written by Pegg alongside Doug Jung.